I was taught to draw the state of israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Starting from the north edge of the Jordan River, drawing a line down to the Sea of Galilee, continuing down to the Dead Sea, and to the Red Sea in the southern point. And then back to the top, the north edge of the Jordan River starting a new line to the west following the Mediterranean Sea down until the line slides back south-east to meet the first line in the Red Sea. What was missing from that drawing?
israel is one of the most unequal high-income countries,27 and yes, occupation just like any other “business” can become profitable; The
The Jewish National Fund, escorted by army-police protection and state sponsored bulldozers, arrived at al-Atrash and destroyed Bedouin farming Lands for the purpose of planting Trees. The Jewish National Fund has been greenwashing ethnic cleansing by pretending to fight for the environment when the real agenda is to clear all so-called israeli Lands from Bedouin and Palestinian people
Writing the story of the war we fight against the trauma we hide in our bodies. Writing the story of your body being inserted into the ground under a Stone the state made for you to tell a tale of heroism and sacrifice. You consented to this role when buttoning the buttons of the uniform. Your heroic image is being used right now to fight a people with no army. A people with no weapon but the will to live as free people on their ancestral homelands.
Stop and feel what you will do the day after the occupation, when Palestine is free.
The racist ideology of the state made sure that Ashkenazi Jews, especially from Poland, received apartments in coastal cities with Water and sewage, close to infrastructure, jobs and schools, hospitals and opportunities.
government decided to change all the middle and high schools in the developing towns from academy schools to professional schools. This meant that if you were living in a development town, you would be assigned a profession at the age of thirteen, the only subject you were allowed to study until you graduated with a degree in that trade. Usually the profession was assigned according to the neighboring factory needs. Through a collaboration between the minister of education and minister of industry and trade, some of the schools moved inside the factories so the kids could provide free labor while they learned the profession. When they graduated, their diploma only granted them the ability to work in the field chosen for them when they were thirteen years old.
Haya merged herself with the wall on the street that led to the factory awaiting Maria, her sewing coworker. Maria was startled by Haya’s sight and quickly followed her to a nearby alley, listening to Haya’s whispers about her family’s situation, Maria swallowed deeply and offered a basement hiding spot beneath her home. Haya’s exhale felt more sincere than any thank you Maria had ever received.
israeli soldier wrote to his family back in Morocco in 1949: We came to Israel and thought we’d find a paradise here, but regrettably it was the opposite, we saw Jews with hearts like Germans. Another soldier from North Africa wrote to his parents: The European Jews, who suffered tremendously from Nazism, see themselves as a superior race and the Sephardi [Mizrahi] Jews as belonging to an inferior one.
All of this can be traced into the statements of the zionist leaders, prime minister David Ben-Gurion: The ancient spirit left the Jews of the East and their role in the Jewish nation receded or disappeared entirely. In the past few hundred of years the Jews of Europe have led the nation, in both quantity and quality. Berl Locker, Chairman of the Jewish Agency executive: In our opinion, the Sephardi and Yemenite Jews will play a considerable part in building our country. We have to bring them over in order to save them, but also to obtain the human material needed for building the country. Shoshana Parsits, MK for the General Zionists Party: You are familiar with the immigrants from those places… you know that we do not have a common language with them. Our cultural level is not theirs. Their way of life is medieval. 7
When we are not fluent in the language of the dominant culture, we move through the world in a silence that even a scream cannot break. It is estimated that one language dies every fourteen days
Starting in 2000, specific streets in Hebron were forcefully closed to the passage of Palestinians and completely open to the passage of israelis. The army welded the doors of Palestinian homes shut to enforce this one-sided blockade.
The main agenda of the state/army became population dispersal, and the government out of pure racism made sure that the population in the most remote and un-resourced areas would be Mizrahi and Sephardic migrants from North Africa and not Ashkenazi migrants from Europe. In 1954, the state facilitated a huge migration of Jews from Morocco. The israelis that came to Morocco to recruit the local Moroccan Jews used a system of manipulation and lies to persuade them to move. They promised the Moroccan Jews apartments by the Sea, with multiple employment opportunities, schools, healthcare, food, and a life of prosperity.
israel has never acknowledged the ongoing deliberate catastrophic, genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
If white supremacy is the virus, then israeli supremacy is one of its main variants— this flag march is the oozing of the virus. The flag march usually happens during Jerusalem Day, which is an israeli national holiday to celebrate our occupation and annexation of Jerusalem.
We need to let the israeli identity die without knowing an alternative.
Our inability to tend to our trauma and heal it in our bodies has made us into murderers
We live to occupy
We brainwash our babies
We indoctrinate them into soldierhood
Our flesh might have survived nazi Germany but our morality has been exterminated. This is the real Shoah of us and there is no surviving this. There are over a million people in Gaza who have been forcefully displaced.
There is no mention of the psychological damage created from being a soldier in an occupying force or the ramifications of serving an oppressive apartheid murderous regime on a developing human psyche. Instead there are new precautions that have been implemented to battle the phenomenon in the words of the iDF.
This systemic and institutional racism against Jews of Color was laid upon the already existing system of racism that was founded against Palestinians and Arabs. The policies of centralizing Ashkenazi Jews as assets can be traced all the way back to the British Mandate. This is the ever-expanding foundation of the state of israel and israeli society.
What does it mean to be from a place?
The organization Visualizing Palestine spells out the ID system:
I stopped dreaming in my mother tongue and I grieve the loss.
In a typical israeli family, everyone who is under seventeen is being groomed and brainwashed to become a soldier, everyone between seventeen and twenty-one is an active soldier, everyone between twenty-one and forty-nine is a reserve soldier, everyone above forty-nine is raising soldiers. The uniform fabric that is placed on our infant bodies, stretches until an armor is covering the whole of us. My uniform-armor has penetrated all my senses and has provided me with belonging, coordinates, orientation, and safety.
The first visceral memory of sharing my dad with the state was during the gulf war. Night after night my mother, siblings, Dog, and I woke up from a loud siren wailing Nachas Zefa (Viper/Rattlesnake), ran to the shelter, and placed gas masks on our faces upon entry. My dad was on an air force base defending and protecting the state. I was a terrified six year-old that needed my dad. His defense of the state translated into him defending me—loving me. This translation happened through mimicry, giving my true feelings and needs away to the state’s cause—a parent’s cause. Learning to be strong in a detached way was expected and demanded, so much so that no other option was allowed to exist. There was a threat of missiles exploding and spreading gas that will kill us, so we practiced placing gas masks on our faces in less than 10 seconds.
We are the ones full of hate, thinking we are at risk when the reality is that we are placing everyone we come in contact with at risk, including ourselves.
I arrive at a fully vaccinated israel, receive a free covid test in the airport, and proceed to a nearby hospital to pay $70 for an antibody test so that I can be released from COVID quarantine. All of this is being organized by the same state that has not offered one vaccine to anyone in the West Bank or Gaza
David Ben Gurion was quoted saying: As for the discrimination between the Jews from North Africa and Eastern Europe, it is true that there is discrimination, it is an obligated discrimination.
